AP 0985: Can I Get My Relaunched Podcast into New and Noteworthy?

By Pat Flynn on October 30, 2017

AskPat 985 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what’s up, everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 985 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I’m here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

We have a great question coming in today from Amy, but before we get to that, I wanna thank today’s sponsor, which is ZipRecruiter. Hey, if you’re hiring it can be very difficult to find the best candidates, and you gotta deal with all the emails and calls and all the job sites out there, but you know what? With ZipRecruiter, you can post your job to over 100 plus job sites with just a single click. Actually, 80 percent of employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site within one day. It all happens in there. No juggling emails, no calls to your office. Check out ZipRecruiter.com/pat and guess what?
You can get it for free: ZipRecruiter.com/pat. One more time, ZipRecruiter.com/pat.

Alright, now here’s today’s question from Amy.

Amy: Hi, Pat, my name is Amy from MakerMama.com. I have been a big fan of yours for years, and thank you for this opportunity to ask questions. I launched my own podcast a couple years back and it’s something that brings me a lot of passion and joy. But I went on a bit of hiatus with it when I was working full time. I am back to working for myself again, and am gearing up to relaunch my podcast, The Maker of You.

I wanted to ask, is there anything that I can do to reach that New & Noteworthy section on iTunes with a relaunch of a podcast that is already in iTunes? Or is there something that you would recommend doing, or strategies for reaching the biggest audience with that relaunch? I look forward to hearing what you say and thank you again for all the services and resources you so generously share.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Amy, thank you so much for the question. Unfortunately, there is no way to get back onto New & Noteworthy if your podcast has already been out for eight weeks. After eight weeks, typically, you are off the possibility of getting into New & Noteworthy. However, there are other sections available. But before I talk about how to best construct this relaunch plan of yours—which I think is a great idea instead of just starting fresh. You can always bring new life back to an old podcast; I’m excited to share those strategies with you. But let me talk about New & Noteworthy really quick. New & Noteworthy has gone through an interesting change over the past years. For a while, it was the place to be and almost every podcast that actually had good artwork and had consistent episodes would eventually end up on New & Noteworthy, and you’d see this giant boost of listeners and downloads for that eight-week period until you drop off after that. That doesn’t happen anymore. If you’ve paid any attention to New & Noteworthy, you might have seen that the same shows have been there for so long—iTunes and Apple just hasn’t really updated it or changed it very much, at least in the US market, and it’s just ridiculous because it’s there and it’s taking up prime real estate. It’s unfair, and it’s something that everybody was relying on to get exposure at first, but that’s not available anymore.

We have to do a few more things, especially when you’re just starting out. But same thing when you’re relaunching: You’re gonna try and get as much exposure as you can. Here’s the approach I would take, Amy. Set a launch date, or relaunch date, for when your new show is gonna come out. It’s essentially the same show as before, it’s just gonna start again. But make that date worldly known. Create an event out of that date. Launch multiple episodes on that date. Launch your best content on that date; let people know about that date yesterday and tomorrow and today. I don’t know why I’m going out of order, but you know what I mean. Make a huge deal out of that and make it something you create buzz for, because what you want is you want the most people listening. You want the most people downloading, leaving reviews, subscribing—you can even put a contest run into it to increase all that. You want all that stuff, ratings, reviews, downloads, subscribes—you want that all happening in the shortest time possible when you relaunch because what’s really gonna help you in your favor is a couple things. You may get into the What’s Hot list and that even still is mysterious for what qualifies a podcast to be on that, but you can’t be too old to be on that list.

But what really is gonna change and affect your exposure are the rankings. When you accelerate all of those things in the shortest time period, you’re gonna give yourself the best chance to get on the Top 200 list, which will then give you exposure when people are just randomly searching through different categories. Then you start to see some interesting things happen. If you’re doing this launch thing, you start to see you climb, and then every time you hit a new milestone I would just announce it, send an email out or make an announcement on social media: “Look where we’re at now, we’re at number 130, let’s see if we can get past 100!” Just make a big deal out of it. Again, you’re treating it like an event. When you treat it like an event in that way, great things happen. You can also get your network behind it, too. I teach a lot of these strategies to my course, Power-Up Podcasting, especially when you’re just starting out new and launching your show, even when you don’t have an audience, how you can get rankings and get exposure and get downloads right from the start. PowerUpPodcasting.com. For those of you who have yet to start your podcast, you can sign up for the wait list there.

But Amy, back to you, I hope this has been helpful. I want to wish you all the best. Congratulations on your success so far and I’m looking forward to hearing how the relaunch of your show goes. Thanks so much, I appreciate it, and for those of you listening, if you have a question that you’d like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page right now.

Finally, here is a quote to finish off the day by Mae West. “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” Alright guys, take care and I’ll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.

Let's figure out what works!

Join 150,000+ active members in the SPI community

Show Notes

Today, Amy has a question about podcasting. She’s about to relaunch her podcast—is there a way to get into the New and Noteworthy section on iTunes when she does? Amy’s website is MakerMama.com.

In this episode, I mention my new course, Power-Up Podcasting. It will take you from no podcast to a vibrant, thriving podcast in just weeks. You can sign up for the waitlist at PowerUpPodcasting.com.

If you liked this episode...Then You'll Love These Too!

The 8 week period for New and Noteworthy is a myth. There are many older podcasts that get featured in New & Noteworthy (niche listings) not because they are new but because they are noteworthy. The front page of iTunes new and noteworthy section is hand curated by Apple. The best way to get featured in any category is to stand out from the crowd and create noteworthy content.